Pedagogy – Best Practices – Technology

Main menu

Post navigation

Teaching with Images

Today’s students are surrounded by visual media in their everyday lives. With their heavy use of the Internet, they are accustomed to accessing information in both textual and visual forms. The use of images in the classroom is a pedagogical strategy aimed at engaging students who have grown up in a media-rich environment. Digital technology has made images more readily available and easier to incorporate into teaching and learning materials.

While teaching with images has been at the core of disciplines like art history for decades, all courses can benefit from the use of visual materials in class lectures, assignments, exercises, and resources. Images can be an effective way of presenting abstract concepts or groups of data. Instructors have reported that their use of images in the classroom has led to increased student interactivity and discussion. Teaching with images can also help develop students’ visual literacy skills, which contributes to their overall critical thinking skills and lifelong learning.

Finding imagesWhile a Google Image Search, which draws from the many images available on the Web, can be useful for finding a specific or obscure image, there are problems associated with this method. Google retrieves images based on the text appearing nearby or on the image file names, often resulting in hundreds of unrelated results that have nothing to do with your subject. In addition, images posted to the Web may have incomplete or incorrect data attached and may have rights restrictions. Finally, the images found by Google are often of insufficient resolution for classroom projection or printing.

High quality images can be found through the Johns Hopkins Libraries, which provide access to a number of specialized image resources. These databases provide downloadable, high-resolution images, include reliable information about the images, and allow advanced search capabilities. The resources include:

ARTstor, a database of over one million images in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Digital Image Database at JHU (DID@JHU) provides JHU faculty and students with access to thousands of images in a variety of subjects. You can also request to add images for specific courses to the database.

Copyright & PermissionsWhile technology has made it easier than ever to download, manipulate, and re-publish images, it has also made it easier to inadvertently violate the copyrights associated with them. The use of copyrighted images foreducational purposes is allowed under the Fair Use exemptions to the US Copyright Act. As there are several factors to take into account when determining whether your use of an image may be considered a fair use, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with these criteria. Many image databases and websites will stipulate the extent to which educational use of their materials is permitted.

There are resources available online to help guide you in determining whether your use qualifies under the Fair Use exemptions.

In addition, there are some best practices to follow to facilitate the legal and ethical use of images. These include:

Restrict online access to images to class members only. Post images to a password-protected website or space, such as Blackboard, or in a shared folder in ARTstor or the Digital Image Database (DID@JHU). If you’re not sure how to do this, consult your Research Services Librarian or a CER staff member.

If you are posting or publishing images to a forum that is open to members of the public, use public domain or Creative Commons-licensed images.

Uses of ImagesImages will be more effective in the classroom if they are meaningfully integrated into course curricula. Think of ways images can support the delivery of content, illustrate class themes, serve as primary research materials, or be built into assignments.

If you would like to learn more about integrating visual materials into your teaching, contact Macie Hall, Instructional Designer, CER: macie.hall@jhu.edu. The following are additional resources on how to use images in the curriculum:

Click! Photography Changes Everything, a Smithsonian project with essays on the impact of photographic images on human behavior, belief, memory, and more. Great for ideas on how to use images in the classroom.

Some ways you can introduce images into your course materials:

Presentations in PowerPoint, Keynote, the ARTstor Offline Viewer, or the DID@JHU image viewer

Primary source materials: photographs as historic documents, maps to inform urban planning and site architecture, diagrams and technical drawings to show the evolution of bridge design, or medical images to practice diagnosis

Ms. Lai was the 2008/9 Art Libraries Society of North America Intern and did her internship at Sheridan Libraries and Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University. She wrote the original Innovative Instructor print series article, Teaching with Images, adapted for this blog post. She completed Master’s Degrees in Library Studies and Archival Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada and holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine. She came to the library profession from several years of teaching art, art history, and cultural and media studies at art colleges in Canada and the US, and is interested in the possibilities of collaborative instructional efforts between libraries, faculty, and technology.

Image Source: Images in the collage were obtained from USA.gov Photos and Images and include images from NASA, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, and National Agricultural Library, ARS, USDA.